Astonishing!
Things Make Sense!
Thomas Sheehan
With the appearance of human being, meaning dawned in the universe, and nothing has been the same since. For the -rst time in the .
billion years of the cosmos, things were no longer just “out there” but
instead became meaningfully present (anwesend). As far as we know,
only human beings can question things, recognize them for what they
are in themselves, name them, talk about them in soliloquy or dialogue, and even talk about that talking. Once man is possessed by the
Promethean -re of intellect and language, human history begins as a
complex unfolding of meaningful lives.1
Heidegger’s philosophical focus never strayed from die Sache selbst,
the astonishing fact that with human existence sense irrupts into an
otherwise meaningless universe.2 Throughout his career he remained
-xed on the twofold question of () the meaningful presence (Anwesen)
of things, and () above all, what lets such meaningful presence happen (das Anwesenlassen).3 The latter is what Heidegger called his basic
question or Grundfrage. If philosophy begins with astonishment, then
the ἀρχή – the origin and ordering – of all Heidegger’s thought was the
wonder of all wonders: that things make sense.4
The back story of this essay has been argued in recent publications
and, given the necessary brevity of the present text, cannot be detailed
here.5 The main point is that Heidegger’s work unfolds with unprecedented clarity, simplicity, and force once one realizes that by equating
Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual, (): – I=DB6H H=::=6C
Sein with Anwesen and by casting his thought in the mode of phenomenology and hermeneutics, Heidegger himself placed the problematic
of being squarely within the parameters of meaning.
For example, in , during his -rst course after the Great War,
Heidegger asked what it is we immediately encounter in lived experience. Is it blanched out “beings” that only later acquire the hue of
meaning? No, what we -rst encounter and always live with is:
the meaningful [das Bedeutsame] – that is what is -rst
and immediately given to you without any mental detour through a conceptual grasp of the thing. When
you live in the everyday world [die Umwelt], everything
comes at you loaded with meaning, all over the place
and all the time. Everything appears within a meaningful context, and that context gives those things their
meaning.6
And in he remarked:
For a long time, I have been designating the beingcharacter of human existence as meaningfulness. This
being-character is the primary one in which the world
is encountered.7
Again in his – course on Logic he signaled the centrality of
meaning to human being:
Because by its very nature existence is sense-making,
it lives in meanings and can express itself in and as
meanings.8
A year later, in Being and Time, Heidegger declared that the hermeneutics of Dasein was the indispensable basis for the doctrine of meaning (Bedeutungslehre) that he presented there.9 The center of that
doctrine of meaning is being-in-the-world. But the essence of world is
meaningfulness (Bedeutsamkeit).10 Therefore, we may interpret beingin-the-world (In-der-Bedeutsamkeit-sein) as man’s thrown-projective
Astonishing! Things Make Sense!
engagement-with-meaning. In addition, throughout his career Heidegger interpreted the pre-Socratic thinkers as proto-phenomenologists focused on the conjunction (τὸ αὐτό) of meaningful presence (εἶναι) and
human apprehension of it (νοῦς). And when it came to Plato and Aristotle, Heidegger read οὐσία, the Greek word for “being,” as παρ-oυσία,
meaningful presence in and to λόγoς. No λόγoς, no παρoυσία.
The danger of hypostasizing Sein – always a Heideggerian temptation – readily dissolves once we understand that human existence is for
the sake of meaning (early Heidegger) or is a priori appropriated into
the meaning-process (later Heidegger). Meaning is the raison d’être
of human being. “The clearing grants Dasein as such.”11 In this shift
to an emphatically phenomenological-hermeneutical way of reading
Heidegger, the Da-sein / Sein correlation is transformed into the Dasinn / Sinn conjunction: man as the only “place” where meaningful
presence or Anwesen occurs.12 We can read the Da-sinn / Sinn conjunction from either side: No man, no meaning (Heidegger >), or no meaning, no man (Heidegger >>).13 The crux of the reversal (Kehre) between
the earlier and later Heidegger is the recognition that human beings
do not generate the space of meaning sua sponte but are pulled into it a
priori. In the -nal analysis, to fail to see that sense-making is the most
basic thing that human being is and does, is to entirely miss the point
of Heidegger’s thought.
In this paper I argue that Heidegger’s extensive corpus from beginning to end remained a hermeneutics of Dasein or an analytic of human
existence, in which Heidegger, like Theseus,
made fast the guiding thread of all philosophical inquiry
at the point where it arises and to which it returns,14
namely, human being. This entails that all the key terms in Heidegger’s lexicon – Ereignis, ἀλήθεια, Lichtung, even Seyn – are existentials
precisely in the sense that the early Heidegger gave this term: necessities and abilities that a priori determine the human way of being.
In Heidegger’s world, apart from the fact of Da-sinn/Sinn, there is no
further, higher level where things like Seyn and Ereignis carry on their
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business. That would be metaphysics in its worst form (even though
it is frequently peddled about as “Heidegger’s thought”). Heidegger
remained on one level only, that of the man-meaning conjunction, and
everything in his corpus is about that. No matter how wide his thinking
ranged or how deep it reached, Heidegger never got beyond human being, and never intended to. Nor did he need to. This may be a scandalum
piis auribus, but so be it. The only pietas philosophers should respect is
that of thinking qua questioning.
The questioning that this essay pursues is twofold, even though I
can only sketch out the second part: (>) How do human beings make
sense of the things they encounter? And (>>) What does this have do to
the basic question (Grundfrage) of Heidegger’s thought?
I . H OW W E M A K E S E N S E
The -rst page of Being and Time proper o,ers the clue to why human
being is intrinsically and exclusively bound up with making sense of
things. There Heidegger designates the -rst characteristic of human
existence as “having to be” (Zu-sein).15 I hope to show that having to
be entails having to make sense of things. This requires a number of
steps, some of which Heidegger laid out in his – course Basic
Concepts of Metaphysics under the rubrics of (6) animal life as projected
into possibility and (7) human being as world-forming.
A . ANIMAL LIFE AS PROJECTED INTO POSSIBILITY
. Life as possibility
For Heidegger as for Aristotle, life, whether it be the ζωή of plants and
animals or the βίος of human beings, is necessarily bound up with possibilities of itself. It is an Entheben in das Mögliche: a being lifted up
and away into the possible. Life’s actuality is caught up in possibility.16
In the last analysis, potentiality and possibility belong
precisely to the essence of the [living being] in its actuality, in a quite speci-c sense.17
Astonishing! Things Make Sense!
In its most basic form, life is a natural drive to be underway to more
of itself, an on-going genesis (Sichzeitigung) of itself as appearing in a
new εἶδος, which in turn generates ever more possibilities.18 Insofar as
life consists in constantly bringing forth something new of itself, it is a
natural process of ἀλήθεια, of revealing itself as this or that.19 The reason? Life is a kind of φύσις, and φύσις is a kind of κίνησις, and κίνησις is
a kind of μεταβολή (change whereby something hidden comes to light),
and μεταβολή is a kind of ἀλήθεια. Φύσις/κίνησις = μεταβολή /ἀλήθεια,
the single process of bringing-forth from itself what was heretofore
hidden from view.
But the living being is not thrown or appropriated into just any
possibilities. Most basically it is an intrinsic Ermöglichung, an enabling
of itself, in the sense of making itself possible. A living being naturally
sets forth its own whereunto (Wozu) and sets itself forth into it, while
always remaining with itself as source of this drive.20 Unlike an implement, which gets its capacity to serve some end from its maker, living
beings pro-duce their own ability to achieve their Wozu. They are “selfenabling” acts of becoming.21
. Self-preservation
Every living being – and not just human being – is stamped with the
essential characteristic of Zu-sein, not just “having to be,” but having to
become in order to stay alive. A living thing has its τέλος as self-preservation.22 It is driven to sur-vive, to keep on keeping on, until its ability
to supply its own self-sustaining self-empowerment runs out naturally
or is cut o, accidentally. This also entails that something that is alive is
able to die at any moment. This does not refer to the obvious fact that
the living being, whether human or animal, moves diachronically into
the future in the direction of its demise. Rather, the living being is
always zum Ende, zum Tode, that is, ever-at-the-point-of-death. For something to live is to always live mortality, at the very edge of its ultimate
possibility, which is to have no more possibility and so to be dead.23
All of this, we stress, is structural and essential to life – it is of a
priori necessity. When we speak of the living being as “thrown” or
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“appropriated” into possibility, both of those terms indicate a living
being’s “facticity,” that which it cannot not be. (The term “facticity,”
like “being-at-the-point-of-death,” applies properly only to human being, but analogically to all life.) Life entails being always more than it
is de facto (tatsächlich), but never more than it is faktisch, never more
than the self-possibilizing that it is “obliged” to be.24
. Movedness and ownness
Another aspect of the structure of life is the bivalence of its κίνησις.
Living is not only an instinctual movement that is stretched out into
possibility (Hin zu, Weg-von-sich).25 It also remains one with itself: “an
exiting from itself in the essence of its being, yet without abandoning
itself.”26 Life is a constant presence to itself, a “retaining itself within
itself.” A living thing, Heidegger says,
does not lose itself in the sense that an instinctual impulse to something would leave itself behind. Rather it
retains itself precisely in such a drive and remains “its
self,” as we might say, in this drive and driving.27
On the one hand, life is bound to its future, a further becoming beyond
what its previous becoming has already achieved. On the other hand, it
constantly remains with the source of movement that it itself is. This
is what Heidegger calls a living being’s “self-like character” or “ownness” throughout change.28 To take the plant as an example: Out of its
root and stem emerge the leaves, then the bud, which opens up as the
.ower, which in turn gives way to the fruit. The plant actualizes new
possibilities for itself while still remaining the same plant, the source
of its own growth.
Openness and ἀλήθεια
When it comes to animals, the a priori stretch into possibility wherein the
animal retains its ownness has a certain (delimited) character of openness
about it. As an instinctual drive to more of itself, animal life has
Astonishing! Things Make Sense!
the character of a traversing, of a dimension in the formal sense. … Dimension is not yet understood in a spatial sense here, although the dimensional character of
drive is … presumably the condition of the possibility
of the animal’s being able to traverse a spatial domain
in a quite determinate manner.29
This “dimension” names the animal’s very limited openness that
“clears the way” for sense perception. In their very di,erent ways of
being ψυχή, both animals and humans are “open” and “intentional”
in the broadest sense of () going beyond any supposedly monadic selfenclosure and () being disclosive of what is other than themselves.30
We recall that, for Heidegger, the nature of ψυχή, i.e., of life, is entbergen,
uncovering something heretofore hidden.31 To live is to be beyond any supposed encapsulation, to be open to and disclosive of something other, which
in the animal’s case is the αἰσθητόν of the corresponding αἴσθησις.32
Captivation
Heidegger speaks of the animal, qua sentient, as captivated by what it
is open to. The sense organs have “no choice,” as it were, about their
corresponding objects. The eye sees light, no matter what. The alternative to seeing light is not to see at all. We noted that animals as sentient
are open, and to that degree alethic, disclosive of their corresponding
objects. Or to reverse the trajectory, the senses’ objects open them up in a
process that Heidegger calls Enthemmung (“disinhibiting”). However,
such sense-openness is restricted to merely taking what the sensible appearances o,er and dealing with that within the limitations of instinct.
The animal “behaves” (benehmen) rather than properly “relating itself
to” (sich verhalten zu) in the way that human being does. This con-nement to behavior is what Heidegger means by “captivation” (Benommenheit) and also by “putting aside” (Beiseitigung), i.e., the animal does
not recognize those appearances as what and how they are in themselves. The objects as such remain withdrawn from animal perception,
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unable to be apprehended as something intelligible. In that sense, “the
animal is separated from man by an abyss.”33
B. HUMAN BEING: HERMENEUTICAL OPENNESS
When we turn to the human being, a vast new dimension of freedom
and possibility breaks out, which Heidegger describes with the image
of “the open.” By its very essence, human being is the genesis of νοῦς or
mind: “The primary openness of human beings is grounded in νοῦς.”34
“Mind” as we use it here is neither a subject’s consciousness nor the neurological processes at work when it feels something, knows something,
or chooses among options. Rather, it is the condition of the possibility of
all of those. It is what allows for the speci-cally human form of knowing: discursiveness or διάνοια, the ability to understand something as
something. With νοῦς, one is no longer con-ned to receiving things in
perception but is freed to relate oneself to them, to take them as they are
in themselves and in terms of how they relate to us. Νοῦς ruptures the
limitations of the animal’s sense experience and instinctual behavior as
well as the constraints of its encircling ring. Human being is now able
to make sense of things.
Over the course of his career Heidegger analyzed human νοῦς, understood as the possibility of intelligibility, under a number of rubrics,
among them: openness or clearing; world; ἀλήθεια ; λόγος ; the “as”; Inzwischen; Austrag; and “time.” I brie.y take up each of those in turn.
. Open-ended receptivity and the clearing
Unlike the restricted range of the animal soul, the human is, in Aristotle’s words, πῶς πάντα, which Heidegger glosses as “openness to everything.”35 We can “become” everything we meet in the universe – not
ontically by fusing our identity with the thing, but by understanding
the thing’s meaning (“receiving its form”). We understand things in
their possibilities by taking them in terms of our possibilities, whatever
they might be.36 Thus they become familiar, a part of our “family.” We
have learned to live with them. They make sense to us.
Astonishing! Things Make Sense!
Heidegger’s preferred image for human openness is that of a clearing (Lichtung). By this spatial image, he understands the condition
of the possibility of understanding anything at all. The clearing, he
writes, is the “open region of understanding”37 into which human being
is appropriated by its very nature. This ur-openedness is
the region of unhiddenness or clearing (intelligibility)
wherein for the -rst time all understanding, i.e., projecting, is possible in the sense of bringing into the open.38
By “intelligibility” Heidegger is referring to every kind of accessibility to speci-cally human experience, whether theoretical, practical,
or whatever.
To be sure, man is still a “πάθος, a being-approached by the world”
through the senses.39 Here Heidegger employs Aristotle’s technical term
for the structural ability to receive (δέχεσθαι) what the senses convey.
But this is not the mere givenness of things to an αἴσθησις-bound and
instinct-ruled animal, captivated and merely stimulated by the things
in its environment. Drawing on De Anima >>> , a – , Heidegger
says: “The νοῦς παθητικός is possible only through the νοῦς ποιητικός,
i.e., a νοεῖν that uncovers the world.”40 In other words, the aspect of
νοῦς whereby we receive things through the senses (νοῦς παθητικός)
is possible only because the νοῦς that allows intelligibility to happen
at all (νοῦς ποιητικός) has always already done its work such that what
we receive through the senses can be known as what and how it is.
. The world
Heidegger writes, “The clearing, and it alone, is world.”41 But world is
the matrix of meaningfulness (Bedeutsamkeit). If things make sense
within the open/clearing/world, where does that sense or meaning
come from?
In Being and Time Heidegger argues that the meaning of something is its intelligibility to man.42 Meaning is not a property attached
to things, nor is it to be found “behind” or “above” them. Meaning is
an existentiale of human being, and existence alone “has” meaning.43
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That is, man’s a priori engagement-with-meaning opens a “region” in
which things can be understood as what they are. Thus only human
existence is meaningful or meaningless. Other things are meaningful
only insofar as they enter the range of human understanding and are
“discovered together with human existence.”44 Only then do they have
Anwesen – which entails that their Anwesen is their meaning. Their
“being” consists in their involvement in the meaningful context that
human being generates a priori. “If we say that entities ‘have meaning,’
this signi-es that they have become accessible in their being.”45
But things come in wholes or sets, not as just one thing by itself nor
as an undi,erentiated “wall” of things out there. That is because human being is not imprisoned in some kind of monadic subjectivity but
is embodied, situated, and contextual. Human being is a hermeneutical
-eld of force that, like a magnet, draws things together into the unities of
meaning. World is not a sum total of things – a “what” – but rather is human being itself as appropriated to sustaining the clearing. “As existing,
human being is its world.”46 World is human being writ large, so to speak,
as the matrix of intelligibility. “World” is another name for the openended human νοῦς that gathers (λέγει) things into unities of sense.47
A speci-c world is a particular lived context within which things
can have some meanings but not others. In that sense a speci-c world
is a restrictive context: it constrains the range of possibilities in terms
of which we can understand something. To cite Heidegger’s famous
example (): At night in the Black Forest, you might mistake a bush
for a deer, but you probably wouldn’t mistake it for the Shah of Iran. And
yet strictly speaking (and at a huge stretch) it is not impossible that the
Shah might show up at night in the woods around Todtnauberg; but you
would never mistake the bush for the cubed root of sixty-nine.48
Ἀλήθεια
Another term for the open clearing (νοῦς) is “disclosedness as such,”
ἀλήθεια in its primary sense. We must rescue this key term from its
general translation as “truth.” As Heidegger understands it, ἀλήθεια refers most basically not to the correct correspondence between thoughts
Astonishing! Things Make Sense!
and things but rather to meaningfulness on at least three analogous
levels. Only on the third and most derivative level does it mean “truth”
as the conformity of a mental or spoken proposition to a given state
of a,airs. Heidegger’s interests lie primarily with the -rst two senses
below, and ultimately with the -rst, ἀλήθεια-, as the ground for the
derivative forms of ἀλήθεια- and -.
ἀλήθεια-: The most basic meaning of ἀλήθεια is human being’s thrown-openness or dis-closedness as such,
the ability to make sense of whatever one encounters.
It is the structure of human existence as “world-open,”
both disclosed and disclosive.49 This ἀλήθεια marks
the a priori fact that meaning is ever possible within
the world of νοῦς
ἀλήθεια-: In a second and derived sense, ἀλήθεια
refers to the disclosedness of things to understanding
in our everyday, pre-propositional involvement with
them. We cannot encounter anything except under the
rubric of meaningfulness. Even if we merely wonder
what something is, we have already brought the thing
into the realm of possible sense. And unless something
were disclosed already, we could not make propositional
statements about it.
ἀλήθεια-: The third and most derivative sense of
ἀλήθεια refers to that particular (and utterly necessary)
state of meaningfulness that we call the “correctness”
of a judgment, the agreement of a propositional statement with the already disclosed state of a,airs it refers
to. Only at this third level do we have truth as adaequatio intellectus et rei, a position that goes back through
Kant and Aquinas to Aristotle.50
It is the -rst of these three levels that corresponds to the clearing.
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. Zwischen, Austrag
Heidegger likewise speaks of the clearing as das Inzwischen, the “space
between” a thing and its meaning that allows for the combination of
the two.51 Further, echoing Aristotle’s ἀφαίρεσις (Latin, abs-tractio: De
anima >>> , b ), he calls it Aus-trag, the possibility of distinguishing and uniting a thing and its meaning. With this latter term we
begin to see the hermeneutical dynamics of the opening up of the clearing. Heidegger begins spelling this out under the rubric of σύνθεσις/
διαίρεσις, which is bound up with his analysis of λόγος.52
. Λόγος and the “as”
In Heidegger’s interpretation, λόγος is not “speech” but what makes
speech possible: the ur-openedness (ἀλήθεια-) thanks to which something can be disclosed as meaningful (ἀλήθεια-). To see how this is the
case, we take up two di,erent kinds of λόγοι or sentences: one that is
meaningful simpliciter and another that is apophantically meaningful.
Every human utterance – whether “Hello,” “Let’s go,” or “I hope
the revolution succeeds” – gives forth something to be understood.
However, some sentences go further and make a claim about what they
give forth as understandable, a claim that could be either true or false.
As regards the -rst case: If I’m standing in the kitchen and say “Hand
me the spatula,” my fellow cook will no doubt understand what the
sentence means. I too understand: I need it for the scrambled eggs. This
sentence or λόγος gives forth something that people can understand: it
is σημαντικός, meaningful.
As regards the second case: When I follow up and say “The spatula’s
in the drawer,” my statement, in addition to being meaningful, makes a
claim. It is a declarative sentence insofar as it declares something about
the status of the spatula. In this second instance I have made not only a
meaningful statement, a λόγος σημαντικός, but in addition an indicative one, a λόγος ἀποφαντικός. The second, unlike the -rst, purports to
show something (-φαίνεσθαι) about (ἀπό-) the spatula itself. A declarative sentence can be in either the a/rmative or the negative. But the
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important thing is that, to be a declarative sentence, it must necessarily
be true or false. It indicates something as – regardless of whether the
indication is right or wrong, or whether I am sincere (I really believe
it’s in the drawer) or deceitful (I know it’s not there).
A further step: When I utter the declarative sentence “Socrates is
an Athenian,” I synthesize “Socrates” with the category “Athenian.”
However, Socrates does not exhaust the category of “all Athenians.”
Therefore, while synthesizing the two, I also maintain a distinction
between them. A declarative sentence is constituted by both σύνθεσις
and διαίρεσις – the uniting-and-distinguishing of the subject and the
predicate. Both together are necessary, whether the sentence be true or
false and in order for the sentence to be true or false. But such σύνθεσις/
διαίρεσις is possible only because of the basic openness or freedom of
human being, which in turn generates the interpretative as-factor, i.e.,
the ability to take Socrates as one thing (an Athenian) or another (perhaps a Theban).53
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TRUE
ἀληθής
AFFIRMATIVE
κατάφασις
FALSE
ψευδής
λόγος ἀποφαντικός
DECLARATIVE SENTENCE
I DECLARE P OF S
TRUE
ἀληθής
NEGATIVE
ἀπόφασις
FALSE
λόγος =
σημαντικός
ψευδής
EVERY
A MEANINGFUL
UTTERANCE
λόγος ἀναποφαντικός
NON - DECLARATIVE SENTENCE
I WISH , HOPE, ASK , OR
COMMAND SOMETHING
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. The existential and the hermeneutical “as”
For Heidegger, the phenomenon of the “as” functions apophantically in
declarative sentences only because it functions existentially as the very
structure of human existence. Here Heidegger’s argument re.ects the
medieval Scholastic axiom operari sequitur esse: activities are consonant
with and derive from natures; or in the reverse: natures determine activities.54 In the present case, one’s sense-making activities follow from
one’s a priori engagement-with-meaning (being-in-Bedeutsamkeit).
In what sense does “as” de-ne the structure of human being? The
movedness of human life is analogous to the bivalent movedness of the
animal, which we noted above: being stretched ahead beyond itself
(Weg-von-sich) while ever remaining present to itself (Bei-sich-sein).
In the case of man, Heidegger calls this movedness a fortnehmende
Zukehr, a being carried away into itself as possibility ( fortnehmende)
that always returns to and stays with itself (Zukehr).55
This being-ahead-of-oneself as a returning [Sichvorweg-sein als Zurückkommen] is, if I may put it this
way, a peculiar kind of movement that existence itself
constantly makes.56
Heidegger now reads that movement of thrown-ahead-returning in
terms of existential σύνθεσις/διαίρεσις.
Projection is this simple, uni-ed happening that can
be formally characterized as σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις
both at the same time. Projection is διαίρεσις insofar
as, qua “taking away,” it takes away the one projecting.
In a certain sense it stretches him apart from himself,
endows him with a stretching forth [Erstreckung].
It takes him away into the possible, not so as to lose
himself there but rather so as to let the possible, as the
possibilizing of the actual, speak back precisely upon
the projector himself as binding – uniting and binding:
σύνθεσις 57
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In other words, the structural movedness of human being is an
existential, world-opening σύνθεσις/διαίρεσις, which in turn serves
as the basis for the apophantic synthesizing-that-distinguishes. Its bivalent self-presence-while-stretched-ahead generates the “as” of sensemaking – in this case the apophantic “as” of declarative sentences. Thus
the appropriated projection that is man
is also that happening in which there originates what
we problematize as the as-structure. The “as” is the
expression for what breaks out in the in-break [of man
among things]. … Only because we have broken into
the dimension of this distinction between the actual
and the possible – between being and entities in the
broadest sense – do we have the possibility of grasping
and understanding something as something.58
The as-structure that is human being is thus responsible for the asstructure of making sense of things whether predicatively or pre-predicatively. Man is appropriated for sustaining the clearing in such a way
that the “as” emerges and discursive meaning becomes possible. This
constitutes a new kind of Ermöglichung, the enabling that lets human
beings make sense of themselves and other things. In Heidegger-code,
Da-sein as thrown or appropriated is the occurrence of disclosure: das
Grundgeschehnis der Wahrheit.59 In another, perhaps more accessible
code, human being is pan-hermeneutical. Our environment – no longer
just a natural encircling ring but now an as-structured world – is an
open-ended hermeneutical space of mediation in general and of sensemaking in particular. Whatever we meet, we meet under the rubric of
“is manifest as,” i.e., “is accessible as” and therefore “is meaningful as.”
We can make sense of whatever we meet (even if only interrogatively),
and if we cannot make any sense of something, we cannot meet it. We
are condemned to ur-ἑρμηνεία.
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. “Time” as hermeneutical openness
“To exist,” Heidegger says, “might be more adequately translated as
‘sustaining a realm of openness.’”60 What is this “sustaining”? How does
human being open up and maintain the disclosive realm of νοῦς?
When Heidegger speaks of the genesis of the space of meaning, he
describes it in terms of man’s being stretched out into the possible (Erstrecktheit). For this he drew on Augustine’s distentio animi, which in
turn derives from Plotinus’ διάστασις ζωῆς.61 In man, being-stretchedforward is man’s already-aheadness in the world of meaning, i.e., in the
possibility of sense-making (schon vorweg sein). This “carries us away
and gives us distance,” i.e., opens up the clearing.62 But along with this
“distance,” human being also returns to itself and renders things meaningfully present, both itself and others (Sein bei as Gegenwärtigung).
The “actuality” of the human being is its living in possibility, which in
turn generates the possibility of making sense of things. We recognize
this schon vorweg Sein bei as the structure of care (Sorge).
Care, in turn, maps on to, and in fact is grounded in, what Heidegger initially called temporality. Temporality (Zeitlichkeit) is what opens
up the -eld of ur-time (Temporalität), which Heidegger later de-ned as
ἀλήθεια-, hermeneutical disclosure: “The term ‘time’ is a preliminary
word for what was later called ‘the truth of being.’”63 The structure of
ἀλήθεια- qua ur-time is discoverable through the structure of temporality, which is gewesend-gegenwärtigende Zukunft. This parses out as
the a priori becoming (gewesende Zukunft) that opens a clearing for
taking something as something and thus rendering it meaningfully
present (gegenwärtigende).64
Understanding itself and its world ecstatically in the
unity of the “open,” factical existence comes back from
these horizons to the things encountered within them.
Coming back to these things understandingly is the
existential meaning of letting them be encountered by
making them present.65
I=DB6H H=::=6C
The conjunction of time/temporality is an early name for what the
existential “as” sustains: the clearing.
I I . H E I D EG G E R ’ S G R U N D F R AG E
What e,ect, if any, does the above have on our understanding of Heidegger’s basic question, his Grundfrage?
A . Μέθοδος
First, a word about the question of μέθοδος – not “method” – but the
path to be followed in pursuing the Grundfrage. In its most basic form,
phenomenological-hermeneutical “method” is a matter of learning how
to stand thematically where we always already stand existentially. The
upshot of Heidegger’s phenomenological reduction is that we engage with
things () from a -rst-personal experiential stance that () is inevitably
sense-making. Even if I get information about a thing from someone
else, it is still I who get that information in the -rst person. (This is the
unavoidable truth of Descartes’ ego cogito.) And no matter where I get
the information from, I cannot not make sense of it. (In other words,
human being is pan-hermeneutical). This -rst-person experiential sensemaking, whereby what I encounter is ineluctably signi-cant to me, is
where I stand prior to any move into the theoretical or the practical.
Someone could deny this basic stance, but that would entail making sense of human being some other way – but still making sense, and
doing so from a -rst-person jemeinig stance. Hence, by an argument
from performative contradiction or retorsion, the denial can be shown
to cancel itself out and to con-rm the prior point.
All this means that I have no reality, no “being,” other than that
of making -rst-person sense of things. Take away -rst-order hermeneutics and I am not left with a remainder, some more basic level of
existence as the supposed bottom-line me-ness of me. No, take away
sense-making and I’m no longer there. To be human is fundamentally
to render things intelligible insofar as existence is thrown open as a
space of possible as-structured relations. As such I have always already
Astonishing! Things Make Sense!
enacted the hermeneutical transcendence that bridges the thing and
its meaningfulness, what Heidegger referred to above as the di,erence
between an entity and its beingness.66
B. HEIDEGGER’S BASIC QUESTION
But to go only this far is merely to have restated metaphysics’ question
about beings in a phenomenological-hermeneutical framework. One
has simply taken the beingness of beings out of its vorhanden status of
existentia and transposed it phenomenologically into its hermeneutical
status as the meaningfulness of the meaningful. But what if we took
the next step, into the Grundfrage itself?
The basic question of Heidegger’s thinking concerns how Sein/Anwesen comes about, i.e., comes to be disclosed a priori in human being.
He calls this “the allowing of meaningful presence,” Anwesenlassen
(see note above). In other words, Heidegger’s basic question asks for
“the essential provenance”67 of meaningful presence. In another formulation it asks, “What is the ground for the inner possibility and necessity
of the openness of Sein?” 68 Or yet again: Insofar as openness/clearing/
ἀλήθεια is the “most worthy of questioning,”69 the Grundfrage becomes
“Where does the clearing come from?” Woher die Lichtung? 70 In short:
How does meaningful presence occur at all? Wie west das Anwesen?
Such an inquiry marks the surpassing of the twofold guiding question of traditional onto-theology: () What is the beingness common
to all things? and () What is the highest instance of such beingness?
That is, Heidegger’s basic question overcomes the ontological di,erence between things and their being71 by asking: What and how is
“the disclosure of be-ing and its grounding in human being”?72 Or in
another iteration: “How does the disclosure of be-ing come about?”73
This question, of course, “forces us into the question of man”74 insofar
as the a priori thrownness or appropriation of existence is what opens
up the clearing as the realm of possible intelligibility. To say that the
“answer” to the question is Ereignis is to point back to man’s a priori
thrown-openness or appropriation whereby the dynamic realm of possible meaning is generated (zeitigt). The appropriation of human being
I=DB6H H=::=6C
to the meaning-process opens the clearing within which things can be
understood and so be meaningful.
In other words, granted the inevitability of the man-meaning conjunction and the pan-hermeneutics that is human being, Heidegger’s
Grundfrage is necessarily changed into “How come meaning at all?”
Wie west die Bedeutsamkeit? What is the source or provenance of world
or clearing? With this question, the meaningful presence of this or that
entity is no longer the focal topic but instead yields to the questions: “Wie
aber dieses, das Seyn?” 75 How does ἀλήθεια- get opened up at all?
The answer forms the center of Heidegger’s work: the insight that
man is for the sake of meaning or, equally, that meaning is the raison
d’être of man.76 From that center, which is “without why” and remains
a mystery, there unfolds all the rest of his thinking.
But after the reversal (Kehre), didn’t Heidegger give being – i.e.,
Bedeutsamkeit – the primacy over human being? No, that primacy was
already established at least from Being and Time on, and the reversal
merely exfoliated its a priori status. We can see the reversal already in
the core phenomenon, being-in-the-world, i.e., engagement-with-meaning. Such engagement is designated as “thrown” (geworfen) in the early
work and as appropriated (ereignet) after the reversal. In showing, as
we have done here, that meaning τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα of appropriated human
being, we have also shown that Sinn is the reason that Da-sinn exists.
Since the clearing is why human being is at all, one need not – in fact,
cannot – leave the precincts of Heidegger’s central topic, human being
in the fullness of its essence.
Astonishing! Things Make Sense!
Notes
5
Note: () I cite texts by page and line, separated by a period. The
line-count does not include headers but does count titles within the
text. The numbers that appear after the equals sign indicate page
and line/s in the English translations. () I use the term “man”
as gender-neutral and as referring to human being as such, i.e.,
Dasein.
<6 : . – : “ … der Mensch [ist] das Seiende … , das den
Einbruch in das Seiende so geschehen lässt, dass dieses in ihm
‘selbst’ o,enbar wird.”
<6 : . – = On Time and Being, . – . The Greek for meaningful presence is παρουσία ; for Anwesenlassen: παρουσίωσις.
<6 : . = Pathmarks, . (ἀρχή). <6 : ., “erstaunlich”; also <6 : . = “On the Question Concerning the Determination of the Matter for Thinking,” Epoché (), ..
<6 : . – = Pathmarks, . “Wunder aller Wunder: daß
Seiendes ist,” and <6 : . – .
Thomas Sheehan, “Facticity and Ereignis” in Daniel O. Dahlstrom, ed., Interpreting Heidegger: New Essays (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, ), . “The Turn,” in Bret
W. Davis, ed., Heidegger: Key Concepts (Durham, J@: Acumen
Publishing, 2009), . “What If Heidegger Were a Phenomenologist?” in Mark Wrathall, ed., The Cambridge Companion
to “Being and Time” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
).
<6 /: . – = Towards the De(nition of Philosophy, . – .
<6 : . – = Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy,
. – .
<6 : . – = Logic: The Question of Truth, . – .
HO . – = Being and Time (), . – .
HO . – = .; HO . – = ..
<6 : . – = ..
I=DB6H H=::=6C
On Ereignis as that conjunction see <6 : . – = Identity and
Di'erence, . – “übereignet.”
<6 : . – = . – : “Wäre der Mensch nicht seiend,
dann könnte auch diese Lichtung nicht geschehen.”
HO . – = . – . Cf. <6 : ..
HO . = ..
<6 /: . = Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, .
“Entheben”; . – = . – “nicht anderes ist als dieses”;
. – = ., “Fähigkeit gehört zum Wirklichsein.”
Ibid. . – = . – .
Ibid. . = ., “Drängen zu”; . – = . – , “treibt
sich,” “Vorgetriebensein”; . – = . – “Hineintreiben
zu.” “Sich-zeitigung” or “Zeitigung” is never to be translated as
“temporalization”; see Zollikoner Seminare, . – = Zollikon
Seminars . – : “Zeitigung als Sich-zeitigen ist Sich-entfalten, aufgehen und so erscheinen.”
<6 : . – = Basic Questions of Philosophy, . – , “Hervor-bringen heißt Ans-licht-bringen.” This is said properly of human being but applies analogously to all life.
<6 /: . – = . – , “Sich-vor-in das eigene Wozu”;
. = . “Sich-in-sich-selbst-Vorlegen.” <6 : . – =
., “in seine ἀρχή zurückstellen.”
<6 /: ., – = . – , : “Sie [die Maschine]
kann sich nicht selbst auf einen Betrieb einstellen und umstellen,
während der Organismus seine eigene Bewegtheit leitet, einleitet
und umleitet … . sich selbst wiederherstellt und erneuert. Selbstherstellung überhaupt, Selbstleitung und Selbsterneuerung sind
o,enbar Momente, die den Organismus gegenüber der Maschine
kennzeichnen … .”
Ibid. . = . and . = . “Selbst-erhaltung.”
Ibid. . – = . – : “Nur was fähig ist und noch fähig ist,
lebt; was nicht mehr fähig ist, … das lebt nicht mehr.” Cf. <6 :
. – . – , “[Dasein] existiert ständig entlang diesem Rande
Astonishing! Things Make Sense!
des Nicht.” This is said properly of human being but analogously
-ts animal life.
HO . – = . – .
<6 /: . – = . – .
Ibid. . – = . – . This is said properly of human being
but applies analogously to animal life.
Ibid. . – = . – .; . = . “bei sich selbst
einzubehalten.”
Ibid. . = . “Selbstcharakter”; . = . “Eigentümlichkeit” (McNeill: “proper peculiarity”); . – = .,
“Bei-sich-sein.”
Ibid. . – = . – .
Regarding animal “intentionality,” see <6 /: . – = .
– : “ … die Bewegung ist in sich selbst eine Bewegung nach … ;
ein Greifen nach … Das Sehen ist das Sehen des Gesichteten, das
Hören ist das Hören des Gehörten.”
Zollikoner Seminare . – = Zollikon Seminars . – .
HO . – = . – .
<6 /: . – = ..
<6 : . – = ..
Ibid. . = .. See De anima >>>, , b .
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, >, , “intellectus
noster … potentiam per potentiam cognoscat.”
<6 : . – = ..
<6 : . – .
<6 : . = ..
Ibid. . – = . – .
<6 : . – = . – .
HO . – = . – , “Verständlichkeit.”
Ibid. . – = . – “Sinn ‘hat’ nur das Dasein.”
Ibid. . – = . – .
Ibid. . – = . – .
Ibid. – = “Dieses [ = Dasein] ist existierend seine
Welt.”
I=DB6H H=::=6C
<6 : . – = . – , “zusammenbringen … In das Unverbor-gene der Anwesung.”
<6 : , no. = – , no. .
<6 : . = . “die Welto,enheit des Daseins”; <6 : .
“erschließend erschlossenes”; <6 : .: “ein geworfener.”
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 6 = 7 ; Aquinas, Quaestiones
disputatae de veritate, quaestio , articulum , respondeo; Aristotle,
Metaphysics >K , b – .
Cf. <6 /: . – = . – : “Das ‘als’ ist die Bezeichnung
für das Strukturmoment jenes ursprünglich einbrechenden ‘Zwischen’.” For a brief statement on the clearing as hermeneutical
space and time, see <6 : . – . = . – .
In what follows I treat only the apophantic as, not the hermeneutical as.
<6 : . – . = . – .
See, for example, Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, >, , ,
respondeo, ad (nem: “similiter unumquodque habet esse et operationem.” Or to reverse the direction, “qualis modus essendi talis modus operandi”: a thing’s way of being determines its way of acting.
<6 /: . = . – .
<6 : . – = . – . I here correct my earlier reading
(ibid.) of “Zeit” in place of “Dasein.”
I cite Heidegger’s words spoken in the classroom (Thursday, February ) from the typescript of the Simon Moser Nachschrift, p. . – , corresponding to the much abbreviated passage at <6 /: . – = . – .
This text is from the Nachschrift (see previous note), . – .,
corresponding roughly to <6 /: . – . = . – .
<6 /: . – = . – ; ibid. . – = . – ,
“Grundgeschehen im Wesen des Menschen.”
Zollikoner Seminare . = . “aus-stehen eines O,enheitsbereich.”
Respectively Confessions M>.. and Enneads, >>>, , , line .
Astonishing! Things Make Sense!
<6 : . – = . – “uns entrückt und die Ferne gibt;
Wesen der Ferne.”
<6 : . – = . – . See also <6 : . = . and <6
: . – .
HO . – = . – .
Ibid. . – = . – .
<6 /: . = . – “Unterschied vom Sein und Seiendem.”
<6 .: . – (alternately Nietzsche >>, . – ) = Nietzsche :
. – “Wesensherkunft,” “Herkunft von Anwesen.”
Japan und Heidegger, ed. Hartmut Buchner (Sigmaringen: Jan
Thorecke, ), . – .
<6 : . = ., “O,enheit,” “Fragwürdigsten”; ibid., . =
. – .
<6 : . = ..
<6 : . – “Überwindung der ontologischen Di,erenz zwischen Sein und Seiendem.”
<6 : . = Mindfulness, . “nach der Wahrheit des Seyns
und ihrer Gründung im Da-sein.”
Ibid. . = . – “wie west die Wahrheit des Seyns.”
<6 : . – = The Essence of Human Freedom, . “drängt
… in die Frage nach dem Menschen.”
<6 : . – = . – .
<6 : . – = . – : “der Mensch west so, daß er das ‘Da,’
das heißt die Lichtung des Seins, ist.” Cf. <6 : . – : “Die
Lichtung-sein – in sie als O,enes sich loswerfen – das Da-sein.”